State of the Art, UHF No. 63

In technological circles, intuition has a bad reputation. Artists can have intuition, yes, and everyone talks about “women’s intuition”...sexist talk for “fuzzy-minded.” But scientists? Engineers? They go on hard facts, not subjective impressions.
     Which explains why we are the frequent targets of sarcastic comments in poison pen letters from holders of (perhaps virtual) engineering degrees. Subjective reviews? Judging with music rather than with instruments? Naive, that’s what.
     But they’re wrong. There is such a thing as scientific intuition. Physicists, and particularly cosmologists, use it to leap across logical gulfs and fashion new concepts of our universe. Indeed, as I shall demonstrate, our critics frequently use this same intuition in finding fault with the way we do things.
     They don’t actually call it intuition, of course. Women have intuition, but hard-nosed businessmen have “gut feelings.” Scientists are more likely to refer to “common sense.”
     An example? Well, we at UHF often write about audible differences among different amplifiers, CD players and cables. Some of our critics take a different tack: they set up blind tests, in which -- it is discovered -- subjects cannot reliably tell which product is which. Since they cannot tell one from the other, common sense says there is no significant sonic difference.
     But is that true? Is that truly hard science, or does it rest on intuition? Well, it is nothing more than common sense to say that if you hear one product and then you hear another, and you can’t spot which is which, therefore there is no difference. It is, as a mathematician would put it, axiomatic.
     But as my father used to say, common sense is just obsolete science. Or, as one clever student once wrote on a geometry exam, an axiom is something so visible it is not necessary to see it.
     Let us entertain for a moment the hypothesis that this “common sense” conclusion might be wrong. How would a scientist go about testing the hypothesis? One way could be to choose two sounds that everyone would recognize as dissimilar, and run them through the same blind test. If subjects still could not reliably tell the difference, then we would have to re-examine the common sense premise.
     Has that ever been done? Yes, many times. Perhaps you’ve read about concerts in which, unannounced, the musicians stop playing and are replaced by a recording, played through the sponsor’s equipment (AR conducted many tests like this). Such live-vs-recorded comparisons were actually carried out in the 1920’s, and they worked then too. Audiences were fooled.
     More recently, we ourselves carried on a blind test, featuring our reference system in one corner and a cassette in the other. The winner? It was a draw. No one could spot when the switchover was being made, let alone which was which.
     So what should our intuition tell us about this?
     If we’re really hung up on common sense, then we can only conclude that a properly made cassette is so good that it does not degrade the sound significantly. And of course that a pair of 1927 speakers, fed from a 78 rpm mono record, sounded to all intents and purposes exactly like a symphony orchestra. But my intuition tells me that’s not right. Another possibility is that the blind test is not telling us what we think it’s telling us.
     Or look at the way some of our critics dismiss differences among cables. They point out that electrons have no memory of the materials they have passed through, and that therefore the signal can be altered only by characteristics that are easy to measure: resistance, inductance and capacitance. It is therefore common sense that exotic materials cannot affect sound. If they could, instrument tests would reveal it.
     True? It certainly appears to be true, but technical test have a built-in bias. We do whatever tests we happen to own instruments for. At maximum level, the common sense seems to hold up, but very little listening is done at maximum level. At very low level, where the spatial and timbral cues are, the behavior of electrons moving through conductors is not the same. Indeed, the invention of the transistor depended on that fact.
     One apologist for “objective” testing recently wrote that “music is art, but reproducing music is science.” He is of course correct, but making scientific and engineering discoveries is also an art. If it weren’t, robots could do it.

(To read the entire issue, just order issue 63 at our secure server.)

Complete articles from this issue:
Soundproofing, Big Screen TV's to Stay Away From, Passion A11, State of the Art

Excerpted articles from this issue:
Comparing the Incomparable: Listening in the Store, Antique Sound Lab Leyla, Vecteur Espace, Two Interconnects, Five Speaker Cables, Four Power Cords


		(Reprinted from issue 63 of UHF Magazine. To purchase the issue, click here. Or click here to subscribe to UHF) State of the Art by Gerard Rejskind
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		In technological circles, intuition has a bad reputation. Artists can have intuition, yes, and everyone talks about “women’s intuition”...sexist talk for “fuzzy-minded.” But scientists? Engineers? They go on hard facts, not subjective impressions. Which explains why we are the frequent targets of sarcastic comments in poison pen letters from holders of (perhaps virtual) engineering degrees. Subjective reviews? Judging with music rather than with instruments? Naive, that’s what. But they’re wrong. There is such a thing as scientific intuition. Physicists, and particularly cosmologists, use it to leap across logical gulfs and fashion new concepts of our universe. Indeed, as I shall demonstrate, our critics frequently use this same intuition in finding fault with the way we do things. They don’t actually call it intuition, of course. Women have intuition, but hard-nosed businessmen have “gut feelings.” Scientists are more likely to refer to “common sense.” An example? Well, we at UHF often write about audible differences among different amplifiers, CD players and cables. Some of our critics take a different tack: they set up blind tests, in which -- it is discovered -- subjects cannot reliably tell which product is which. Since they cannot tell one from the other, common sense says there is no significant sonic difference. But is that true? Is that truly hard science, or does it rest on intuition? Well, it is nothing more than common sense to say that if you hear one product and then you hear another, and you can’t spot which is which, therefore there is no difference. It is, as a mathematician would put it, axiomatic. But as my father used to say, common sense is just obsolete science. Or, as one clever student once wrote on a geometry exam, an axiom is something so visible it is not necessary to see it. Let us entertain for a moment the hypothesis that this “common sense” conclusion might be wrong. How would a scientist go about testing the hypothesis? One way could be to choose two sounds that everyone would recognize as dissimilar, and run them through the same blind test. If subjects still could not reliably tell the difference, then we would have to re-examine the common sense premise. Has that ever been done? Yes, many times. Perhaps you’ve read about concerts in which, unannounced, the musicians stop playing and are replaced by a recording, played through the sponsor’s equipment (AR conducted many tests like this). Such live-vs-recorded comparisons were actually carried out in the 1920’s, and they worked then too. Audiences were fooled. More recently, we ourselves carried on a blind test, featuring our reference system in one corner and a cassette in the other. The winner? It was a draw. No one could spot when the switchover was being made, let alone which was which. So what should our intuition tell us about this? If we’re really hung up on common sense, then we can only conclude that a properly made cassette is so good that it does not degrade the sound significantly. And of course that a pair of 1927 speakers, fed from a 78 rpm mono record, sounded to all intents and purposes exactly like a symphony orchestra. But my intuition tells me that’s not right. Another possibility is that the blind test is not telling us what we think it’s telling us. Or look at the way some of our critics dismiss differences among cables. They point out that electrons have no memory of the materials they have passed through, and that therefore the signal can be altered only by characteristics that are easy to measure: resistance, inductance and capacitance. It is therefore common sense that exotic materials cannot affect sound. If they could, instrument tests would reveal it. True? It certainly appears to be true, but technical test have a built-in bias. We do whatever tests we happen to own instruments for. At maximum level, the common sense seems to hold up, but very little listening is done at maximum level. At very low level, where the spatial and timbral cues are, the behavior of electrons moving through conductors is not the same. Indeed, the invention of the transistor depended on that fact. One apologist for “objective” testing recently wrote that “music is art, but reproducing music is science.” He is of course correct, but making scientific and engineering discoveries is also an art. If it weren’t, robots could do it. (To read the entire issue, just order issue 63 at our secure server.) Complete articles from this issue: Soundproofing, Big Screen TV's to Stay Away From, Passion A11, State of the Art Excerpted articles from this issue: Comparing the Incomparable: Listening in the Store, Antique Sound Lab Leyla, Vecteur Espace, Two Interconnects, Five Speaker Cables, Four Power Cords [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [BACK HOME]